The Turn
Ben Jonson tells us how we should measure a life well lived.
Published 1640
King Charles I 1625-1649
Ben Jonson tells us how we should measure a life well lived.
Published 1640
King Charles I 1625-1649
Ben Jonson’s collection of short poems Underwoods was published in 1640, soon after he died. He tells us that it takes its title from a habit of classical poets, who liked to call their miscellanies ‘Woods’. If Jonson’s earlier poems were his woods, he said, then these little additions were shrubs on the woodland floor. The following lines are a reflection on the value of a life.
It is not growing like a tree
In bulk, doth make men better be;*
Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sear:*
A lily of a day.
Is fairer far in May,
Although it fall and die that night;
It was the plant, and flower of light.
In small proportions we just beauties see;
And in short measures, life may perfect be.
From The Poems of Robert Greene, Christopher Marlowe, and Ben Jonson (1878), edited by Robert Bell (1800-1867).
* Jonson was by his own admission a big man, with a ‘prodigious waist’, craggy-faced, and stooping.
* ‘Sear’ as an adjective means dried up, withered.
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
Why does Jonson choose the day lily as his example of a beautiful flower?
Because it lasts a very short time.
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
The daylily is short-lived. It is beautiful.
See if you can include one or more of these words in your answer.
IBloom. IILessen. IIITake.